Suburban Marxist and others, in comments, rightly ask this question:

When will Grodscorp post a statement condemning the Israeli atrocities currently underway in Gaza?

And while I can’t speak for Scott, John, Ant and others, the reason I haven’t posted or commented about it is this: I’ve just run out of things to say.

For a journalist attuned to world politics to say such a thing sounds lazy and evasive; and for a blogger to toy with irrelevant bottom-feeders like MK and Dr TingTong while staying silent on Israel and Palestine seems superficial to the point of silliness. But after years of writing, ranting and fuming about the limitless hatred and senseless murder that Israelis and Palestinians visit upon each other, it feels that every time I speak up or spill ink on the matter, I’m going over ground that I and a thousand people smarter than me have covered countless times before. So now I prefer to watch, wait and hope, rather than to write, rant and revile.

Don’t mistake my silence for indifference though. I’m a lifelong follower of this crisis, born shortly before the Yom Kippur War and raised in a house where every war and wave of aggression was discussed around the dinner table or the TV. I chose to study it at university (my tutor was one of those Israel-criticising Jews that right-wing bloggers love to portray as race-traitors). I visited Israel in 1998, where I found the people wonderful but the atmosphere so tense and uncomfortable that I cut a six-week visit down to four and left despairing that a solution was a generation away.

And that, by and large, has been my position since: one of despair. I despair for that part of the world and particularly its children, whose innocence is all too brief before they are infected by the pathological contempt Israelis and Palestinians feel for each other and for peace itself. I despair for the Israeli civilians who live each day in fear of Hamas rockets dropping on their homes and schools; and I despair for those killed and maimed by ever-disproportionate IDF retaliation. I despair for the leaders – Sadat, Rabin, Peres, Clinton and others - who worked so hard to forge a brittle peace; and I despair for those who frittered it away with their stubbornness and stupidity. And I despair for the world, condemned as it is by the shockwaves that radiate from this region: the malevolent shadow of al Qaeda, the abhorrent anti-Semitism rising in the Middle East and the threat of nuclear war on Iran.

Every new wave of conflict brings little that is new, it is just the same play in the same theatre with a different cast. Writers and bloggers finger-point and fulminate but new insights and attitudes are virtually absent. For some it’s just a further opportunity to vent the frothing bile of racism they ordinarily release in just a trickle. Some scour the media and the blogosphere, cherry-picking to support their ideological position or statements they can flag as support for terrorism or war crimes. The conspiracy theories and mental gymnastics that some will use to explain or justify dispossession, violence or murder is bewildering … they will condemn Hamas for firing rockets and mortars at civilians – and in the same breath explain away the bombing of a school as a legitimate military tactic.  There is no better example of this than the treatment of Rachel Corrie after she was crushed to death by an IDF bulldozer in 2003; nothing on the Internet has upset or disgusted me more than the campaign of vilification since visited upon her.

So, while others at Grods will see it differently, that is my position. I choose to say little, feeling a little guilty for doing so – but I am watching closely nonetheless.

I am sick of the endless, deceiptful PR marriage of war and sport that bubbles to the surface on ANZAC Day like some malignant marketing orgasm.

As far as I can tell war and sport have only three things in common: they involve two sides wearing different uniforms and led by stupid but overpaid men; there’s usually a winner and a loser; and obsessed males buy books about both of them. If you watched any sports coverage on ANZAC Day you’d think the two were exactly the same. The broadcast of today’s AFL game started at 12 noon but the game itself doesn’t begin until 2.40pm. The preceding 160 minutes is 10 per cent football and 90 per cent thinly drawn analogies of war and sport, combat and games, hamstrings and minefields, sportsmen and warriors. Stories of AFL/VFL players who served in war because footy players and soldiers are, like, great heroes.

Let’s get a few things straight:

Sport is NOT war. Apart from nonsensical risky sports like high-speed motor racing, hardly anyone dies playing sport.

Running thoughtlessly into a pack of thick-necked footballers is not the same as running at a machine-gun nest.

In sport you might do a knee or rupture your Achilles tendon; in war you might have your head shot off.

Though it’s sometimes used otherwise, sport is apolitical; war is a continuation of politics by other means.

Footballers and soldiers are not the same thing, goddamit. Commemorate our war veterans and celebrate our sporting heroes – but don’t try to equate the latter with the former.

And a final question for the AFL: if the football community has always loved our returned soldiers, respected their effort in wartime and applauded players who served their country in war, etc. then why did the VFL competition continue through both world wars? Surely it should have been suspended as a mark of respect and to allow those brave footballing gladiators to serve Australia in war, as was done with the FA Cup…

And with 16 simple words former foreign minister Alexander Downer finally tells the truth.

THE decision by President George Bush to overthrow the regime of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and the decisions of the British and Australian governments to provide military support to the Americans, will always be controversial. It was, nevertheless, the right decision.

If only Downer and the shameful government of which he was an integral part could’ve been upfront with the people who elected them five years ago.

ps/- And before any RWDBs get started: YES I think that Hussein was a murderous bastard who heartily deserved his eventual fate. YES I think that Iraq deserved better than his regime and that if the fledging democracy that is slowly beginning to take shape there blossoms the world will be a better place for it. YES I think coalition troops in Iraq are fighting a noble cause and I wish them the very best. BUT the way that our government, along with the governments of the USA and the UK, went about selling this invasion to their electorates undermines the very democracy we are supposedly trying to spread.

I noticed this classic piece of World War I propaganda while checking out Darrin (sic) Hodges’ Anglo-Australian National Community Council website yesterday.

Hodges, it must be said, is an intriguing fellow. Legend has it he founded the AANCC after being denied membership to the Canberra chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, on the basis that he was too ignorant and mean-spirited, and that he spelled “abbows” incorrectly on his application form.

This post isn’t about Hodges, though — if I wanted to discuss excruciating and embarrassing turds, I’d make an appointment to see a proctologist. Rather, it concerns an interesting tale about the creator of this propaganda poster, Australian artist Frederick William Leist (1873–1945).

Fred Leist rose to prominence in the 1890s as an illustrator for The Bulletin and the Sydney Mail. He moved to London in the early 1900s to pursue his painting career, and found some success there.

But like most artists, Leist found that to make ends meet he had to supplement his art with commissions and odd jobs — and his oddest job of all was designing recruiting posters during World War I.

The poster above was his last, due to a little-known misunderstanding.

In 1916 the War Office commissioned a piece from Leist entitled Australian Chivalry. The creative brief for the poster took the form of a telegraph, which — due to Leist’s experience and exemplary record with the Office — dispensed with the usual detailed instructions and simply requested a “depiction of Digger with crusader; tone more gay than gruesome”.

The wording proved most unfortunate: the War Office couldn’t have known that Leist was well ahead of his time lexicologically; likewise, Leist couldn’t have known that the term “gay” wouldn’t come into popular usage as a euphemism for homosexual for several decades.

An understandably confused Leist, who felt somewhat indebted to the War Office, didn’t want to appear foolish by requesting clarification; so he set about creating three slightly different paintings that would work either as a series or as individual posters, depending on which option best reflected his employer’s concept.

The staunchly conservative War Office was mortified by the posters Leist submitted, but a looming print deadline meant recommissioning the job was not an option. They reluctantly chose the least questionable of the three, paid Leist and never sought his services again.

The complete set was thought to have been lost or destroyed, but as luck would have it was recently discovered on my PC. CLICK HERE to view it.